Katy Barrett | UK Parliament (original) (raw)
Books by Katy Barrett
Liverpool University Press, 2023
Why make a joke out of a niche and complex scientific problem? That is the question at the heart ... more Why make a joke out of a niche and complex scientific problem? That is the question at the heart of this book, which unearths the rich and surprising history of trying to find longitude at sea in the eighteenth century. Not simply a history on water, this is the story of longitude on paper, of the discussions, satires, diagrams, engravings, novels, plays, poems and social anxieties that shaped how people understood longitude in William Hogarth’s London. We start from a figure in one of Hogarth’s prints – a lunatic incarcerated in the madhouse of A Rake’s Progress in 1735 – to unpick the visual, mental and social concerns which entwined around the national concern to find a solution to longitude. Why does longitude appear in novels, smutty stories, political critiques, copyright cases, religious tracts and dictionaries as much as in government papers? This sheds new light on the first government scientific funding body – the Board of Longitude – established to administer vast reward money for anyone who found a means of accurately measuring longitude at sea. Meet the cast of characters involved in the search for longitude, from famous novelists and artists to almost unknown pamphleteers and inventors, and see how their interactions informed the fate of longitude’s most famous pursuer, the clockmaker John Harriso
The Sun: One Thousand Years of Scientific Imagery, 2018
Of all natural phenomena, the Sun perhaps has the greatest power to move and inspire us. Dazzling... more Of all natural phenomena, the Sun perhaps has the greatest power to move and inspire us. Dazzling, beautiful, powerful, mysterious – the Sun, which gives us life and shapes our concept of time, has fascinated people throughout history.
This book, written to accompany The Sun: Living With Our Star exhibition at the Science Museum, charts our unwavering fascination with the Sun through a rich collection of scientific imagery. From the first sketch of a sunspot by a twelfth-century monk, to awe-inspiring close-ups taken by orbiting spacecraft, these images can also be appreciated as works of art; a personal dedication from the theologians, artists and astronomers who made them.
With never-before published photographs and illustrations of eclipses and eruptions, the violent solar surface and the planets that surround it, this book will show you the Sun as you’ve never seen it before, as well as the imaging processes that have helped scientists and amateurs alike learn about our nearest star.
Book Contributions by Katy Barrett
The Mantis Shrimp: A Simon Schaffer Festschrift, 2022
The Medicine Cabinet: The Story of Health and Disease told through Extraordinary Objects , 2020
The Medicine Cabinet: The Story of Health and Disease told through Extraordinary Objects , 2020
The Material Cultures of Enlightenment Arts and Sciences, 2016
A ceramic plate that tells us about how eighteenth century commentators used scientific instrumen... more A ceramic plate that tells us about how eighteenth century commentators used scientific instruments to talk about gender and morality.
The Moon: A Celebration of our Celestial Neighbour, 2019
Project Moon looks at four print images from the eighteenth to nineteenth centuries which played ... more Project Moon looks at four print images from the eighteenth to nineteenth centuries which played with ideas for reaching the moon.
Papers by Katy Barrett
A Cultural History of Objects in the Age of Enlightenment, 2021
KNOW: A Journal on the Formation of Knowledge
Know: A Journal on the Formation of Knowledge, 2022
Art History
In 1948, the Science Museum, London, acquired a drawing by French artist Sébastien Le Clerc entit... more In 1948, the Science Museum, London, acquired a drawing by French artist Sébastien Le Clerc entitled The Physical Laboratory of the Académie des Sciences, bequeathed by the chemist and collector George Hugh Gabb. Separated from two other drawings by Le Clerc of the same composition, the drawing has been interpreted as a view of the French Académie des Sciences after its move to the Louvre in 1699. This essay considers the provenance and reception history of the drawing, paying attention to its research and interpretation by Gabb. His comparison of the related unfinished print to Le Clerc's most famous image, L'Académie des Sciences et des Beaux-Arts, reveals similar employment of instruments and imagery by Le Clerc, showing both the artist and the Académie producing scientific knowledge through art. Gabb's drawing gives one rich example of how we can understand the entwined histories of art and science over time.
Interface Focus, 2021
This article considers the history of medical image-making to shed light on an aspect of the COVI... more This article considers the history of medical image-making to shed light on an aspect of the COVID-19 pandemic. Starting from a contemporary art commission in the Science Museum's ‘Medicine: The Wellcome Galleries’, we look at the role of image production and presentation in understanding the spread of disease. From the intertwined histories of art and scientific image-making, we explore five examples of iconic medical images, by John Snow, Florence Nightingale, Arthur Schuster, Donald Caspar and Aaron Klug, ending with a model of the coronavirus by the Cambridge University Laboratory of Molecular Biology. We trace how images have provided the means for discovery, for description and for diagnosis and outline the different ways in which diseases have been located in the history of the medical image: in the community, in the body, in the cell and on the image itself.
Art History, 2022
In 1948, the Science Museum, London, acquired a drawing by French artist Sébastien Le Clerc entit... more In 1948, the Science Museum, London, acquired a drawing by French artist Sébastien Le Clerc entitled The Physical Laboratory of the Académie des Sciences, bequeathed by the chemist and collector George Hugh Gabb. Separated from two other drawings by Le Clerc of the same composition, the drawing has been interpreted as a view of the French Académie des Sciences after its move to the Louvre in 1699. This essay considers the provenance and reception history of the drawing, paying attention to its research and interpretation by Gabb. His comparison of the related unfinished print to Le Clerc's most famous image, L'Académie des Sciences et des Beaux-Arts, reveals similar employment of instruments and imagery by Le Clerc, showing both the artist and the Académie producing scientific knowledge through art. Gabb's drawing gives one rich example of how we can understand the entwined histories of art and science over time.
Society was a minefield for an eighteenth-century lady. The temptations of gambling, fashion and ... more Society was a minefield for an eighteenth-century lady. The temptations of gambling, fashion and drink easily led to a spiral of financial, social and physical ruin ending in prostitution and imprisonment. Such was the moral of an earthenware plate produced by John Aynsley in Staffordshire in the 1790s.
Science Museum Group Journal
Textile History
Writing Material Culture History examines the methodologies currently used in the historical stud... more Writing Material Culture History examines the methodologies currently used in the historical study of material culture. Touching on archaeology, art history, literary studies and anthropology, the book provides history students with a fundamental understanding of the relationship between artefacts and historical narratives. The role of museums, the impact of the digital age and the representations of objects in public history are just some of the issues addressed in a book that brings together key scholars from around the world. A range of artefacts, including a 16th-century Peruvian crown and a 19th-century Alaskan Sea Lion overcoat, are considered, illustrating the myriad ways in which objects and history relate to one another. Bringing together scholars working in a variety of disciplines, this book provides a critical introduction for students interested in material culture, history and historical methodologies. - See more at: http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/writing-material-culture-history-9781472518569/#sthash.n5A8hNDh.dpuf
Liverpool University Press, 2023
Why make a joke out of a niche and complex scientific problem? That is the question at the heart ... more Why make a joke out of a niche and complex scientific problem? That is the question at the heart of this book, which unearths the rich and surprising history of trying to find longitude at sea in the eighteenth century. Not simply a history on water, this is the story of longitude on paper, of the discussions, satires, diagrams, engravings, novels, plays, poems and social anxieties that shaped how people understood longitude in William Hogarth’s London. We start from a figure in one of Hogarth’s prints – a lunatic incarcerated in the madhouse of A Rake’s Progress in 1735 – to unpick the visual, mental and social concerns which entwined around the national concern to find a solution to longitude. Why does longitude appear in novels, smutty stories, political critiques, copyright cases, religious tracts and dictionaries as much as in government papers? This sheds new light on the first government scientific funding body – the Board of Longitude – established to administer vast reward money for anyone who found a means of accurately measuring longitude at sea. Meet the cast of characters involved in the search for longitude, from famous novelists and artists to almost unknown pamphleteers and inventors, and see how their interactions informed the fate of longitude’s most famous pursuer, the clockmaker John Harriso
The Sun: One Thousand Years of Scientific Imagery, 2018
Of all natural phenomena, the Sun perhaps has the greatest power to move and inspire us. Dazzling... more Of all natural phenomena, the Sun perhaps has the greatest power to move and inspire us. Dazzling, beautiful, powerful, mysterious – the Sun, which gives us life and shapes our concept of time, has fascinated people throughout history.
This book, written to accompany The Sun: Living With Our Star exhibition at the Science Museum, charts our unwavering fascination with the Sun through a rich collection of scientific imagery. From the first sketch of a sunspot by a twelfth-century monk, to awe-inspiring close-ups taken by orbiting spacecraft, these images can also be appreciated as works of art; a personal dedication from the theologians, artists and astronomers who made them.
With never-before published photographs and illustrations of eclipses and eruptions, the violent solar surface and the planets that surround it, this book will show you the Sun as you’ve never seen it before, as well as the imaging processes that have helped scientists and amateurs alike learn about our nearest star.
The Mantis Shrimp: A Simon Schaffer Festschrift, 2022
The Medicine Cabinet: The Story of Health and Disease told through Extraordinary Objects , 2020
The Medicine Cabinet: The Story of Health and Disease told through Extraordinary Objects , 2020
The Material Cultures of Enlightenment Arts and Sciences, 2016
A ceramic plate that tells us about how eighteenth century commentators used scientific instrumen... more A ceramic plate that tells us about how eighteenth century commentators used scientific instruments to talk about gender and morality.
The Moon: A Celebration of our Celestial Neighbour, 2019
Project Moon looks at four print images from the eighteenth to nineteenth centuries which played ... more Project Moon looks at four print images from the eighteenth to nineteenth centuries which played with ideas for reaching the moon.
A Cultural History of Objects in the Age of Enlightenment, 2021
KNOW: A Journal on the Formation of Knowledge
Know: A Journal on the Formation of Knowledge, 2022
Art History
In 1948, the Science Museum, London, acquired a drawing by French artist Sébastien Le Clerc entit... more In 1948, the Science Museum, London, acquired a drawing by French artist Sébastien Le Clerc entitled The Physical Laboratory of the Académie des Sciences, bequeathed by the chemist and collector George Hugh Gabb. Separated from two other drawings by Le Clerc of the same composition, the drawing has been interpreted as a view of the French Académie des Sciences after its move to the Louvre in 1699. This essay considers the provenance and reception history of the drawing, paying attention to its research and interpretation by Gabb. His comparison of the related unfinished print to Le Clerc's most famous image, L'Académie des Sciences et des Beaux-Arts, reveals similar employment of instruments and imagery by Le Clerc, showing both the artist and the Académie producing scientific knowledge through art. Gabb's drawing gives one rich example of how we can understand the entwined histories of art and science over time.
Interface Focus, 2021
This article considers the history of medical image-making to shed light on an aspect of the COVI... more This article considers the history of medical image-making to shed light on an aspect of the COVID-19 pandemic. Starting from a contemporary art commission in the Science Museum's ‘Medicine: The Wellcome Galleries’, we look at the role of image production and presentation in understanding the spread of disease. From the intertwined histories of art and scientific image-making, we explore five examples of iconic medical images, by John Snow, Florence Nightingale, Arthur Schuster, Donald Caspar and Aaron Klug, ending with a model of the coronavirus by the Cambridge University Laboratory of Molecular Biology. We trace how images have provided the means for discovery, for description and for diagnosis and outline the different ways in which diseases have been located in the history of the medical image: in the community, in the body, in the cell and on the image itself.
Art History, 2022
In 1948, the Science Museum, London, acquired a drawing by French artist Sébastien Le Clerc entit... more In 1948, the Science Museum, London, acquired a drawing by French artist Sébastien Le Clerc entitled The Physical Laboratory of the Académie des Sciences, bequeathed by the chemist and collector George Hugh Gabb. Separated from two other drawings by Le Clerc of the same composition, the drawing has been interpreted as a view of the French Académie des Sciences after its move to the Louvre in 1699. This essay considers the provenance and reception history of the drawing, paying attention to its research and interpretation by Gabb. His comparison of the related unfinished print to Le Clerc's most famous image, L'Académie des Sciences et des Beaux-Arts, reveals similar employment of instruments and imagery by Le Clerc, showing both the artist and the Académie producing scientific knowledge through art. Gabb's drawing gives one rich example of how we can understand the entwined histories of art and science over time.
Society was a minefield for an eighteenth-century lady. The temptations of gambling, fashion and ... more Society was a minefield for an eighteenth-century lady. The temptations of gambling, fashion and drink easily led to a spiral of financial, social and physical ruin ending in prostitution and imprisonment. Such was the moral of an earthenware plate produced by John Aynsley in Staffordshire in the 1790s.
Science Museum Group Journal
Textile History
Writing Material Culture History examines the methodologies currently used in the historical stud... more Writing Material Culture History examines the methodologies currently used in the historical study of material culture. Touching on archaeology, art history, literary studies and anthropology, the book provides history students with a fundamental understanding of the relationship between artefacts and historical narratives. The role of museums, the impact of the digital age and the representations of objects in public history are just some of the issues addressed in a book that brings together key scholars from around the world. A range of artefacts, including a 16th-century Peruvian crown and a 19th-century Alaskan Sea Lion overcoat, are considered, illustrating the myriad ways in which objects and history relate to one another. Bringing together scholars working in a variety of disciplines, this book provides a critical introduction for students interested in material culture, history and historical methodologies. - See more at: http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/writing-material-culture-history-9781472518569/#sthash.n5A8hNDh.dpuf
British Art Studies, 2016
The "Look First" feature is pre-eminently visual, encouraging viewers to engage with art objects ... more The "Look First" feature is pre-eminently visual, encouraging viewers to engage with art objects in new ways through BAS's digital platform. "Looking for the Longitude" will be published as a sequence over 12 days to coincide with the anniversary of the Hogarth Act, culminating on 25 June. Looking for "the Longitude" takes us on an interactive exploration of the 'Longitude Problem', drawing in contributions from experts in the field as it grows. Locating a detail from the final plate of Hogarth's A Rake's Progress as its starting point, the article will unfold over subsequent weeks to include a range of connected images and objects, including a Twitter tour of associated places and sites. Figure 9. Unknown, The Bubblers Medley, 1721, hand coloured engraving, 34.2 x 25.1 cm Digital image courtesy of Trustees of the British Museum.
This article considers the history of medical image-making to shed light on an aspect of the COVI... more This article considers the history of medical image-making to shed light on an aspect of the COVID-19 pandemic. Starting from a contemporary art commission in the Science Museum's ‘Medicine: The Wellcome Galleries’, we look at the role of image production and presentation in understanding the spread of disease. From the intertwined histories of art and scientific image-making, we explore five examples of iconic medical images, by John Snow, Florence Nightingale, Arthur Schuster, Donald Caspar and Aaron Klug, ending with a model of the coronavirus by the Cambridge University Laboratory of Molecular Biology. We trace how images have provided the means for discovery, for description and for diagnosis and outline the different ways in which diseases have been located in the history of the medical image: in the community, in the body, in the cell and on the image itself.
European History Quarterly, 2016
Journal of the History of Collections
Science Museum Group Journal
Journal of the History of Collections, 2021
Museums Journal, 2018
Review of Science Museums in Transition: Cultures of Display in Nineteenth-Century Britain and Am... more Review of Science Museums in Transition: Cultures of Display in Nineteenth-Century Britain and America
Museums Journal, 2017
Review of The Return of Curiosity: What Museums are good for in the 21st century by Nick Thomas
West 86th 23.2, 2016
Review of The Mind is a Collection: Case Studies in Eighteenth-Century Thought by Sean Silver'
Apollo Magazine, 2016
Review of The Anarchist's Guide to Historic House Museums by Franklin D. Vagnone and Deborah E. R... more Review of The Anarchist's Guide to Historic House Museums by Franklin D. Vagnone and Deborah E. Ryan
European History Quarterly 46.2, 2016
Review of Writing Material Culture History eds. Anne Gerritsen and Giorgio Riello
Museums Journal, May 2015
Museum History Journal, Jan 2010
I will look at the long history of art and science in dialogue, considering the many ways in whic... more I will look at the long history of art and science in dialogue, considering the many ways in which artists and scientists have inspired, criticised and informed one another, using the same tools and asking the same questions. Rooted in the collections and histories of the Science Museum, I will consider a series of moments at which art and science interacted to change the course of both. Painting, sculpture, drawing, photography, and digital media all feature as shared visual approaches that have also had a broader public impact in disseminating changing ideas. We will see how a series of disciplinary shifts from the 17th to the 20th century have served to shape how we see art and science as engaged or otherwise. Art has always been at the heart of the Science Museum. I ask what we can continue to learn from collecting and interpreting art in this context.
Burlington Contemporary, 2020
Burlington Contemporary, 2019
Science Museum Group Journal 10, 2018
Review of Tacita Dean: Landscape, Portrait, Still Life
Museums Journal, 2018
Review of Royal Air Force Museum, London